Hot online date may really be a nasty bot

A daily dose of postings from The Chronicle's technology blog (sfgate.com/blogs/tech)

Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, February 13, 2010

This Valentine's Day, scammers are trying to hook you up with a bad date.

Researchers at security firm PC Tools recently obtained a transcript of an online robot pretending to be a 21-year-old woman and having an automated conversation with a Windows Live Messenger user. In the exchange, the aptly named Flirt Bot contacts a 32-year-old woman and tries to lure her into an alleged Webcam site with promises of modeling "her" panties.

Michael Greene, PC Tools' vice president of product strategy, said the site is actually a ploy to get users' credit card details. He added he wouldn't be surprised if fraudsters are using the same ploy to infect victims' computers with viruses and steal other information.

PC Tools researchers learned of the existence of Flirt Bot in 2007, when they discovered an ad for it on a Russian forum where cyber-criminals buy and sell hacking tools. However, Greene said this is the first time they've found evidence of the bot acting in the wild.

"When one of these things begins to spread, they tend to do so pretty quickly," Greene said.

So I wouldn't be surprised if several of you have already seen this bot out there lately. Criminals never miss the opportunity to launch seasonal attacks. E-commerce farces, for instance, spike during Thanksgiving and Christmas. E-card scams have also abounded in previous Valentine's Days.

"When there are emotional events or things that tug at our heart strings like Valentine's Day, the cyber-mafias will go out their way to try to get people," Greene said.